CHRIS MUSGRAVE IS A GREEN PARTY COUNCILLOR ON EXETER CITY COUNCIL AND REPRESENTS THE ALPHINGTON WARD

It’s happened again. In another of what’s become a long line of scrutiny fails, Labour again blocked my attempt to secure more fairness and transparency in Council processes.

Last week, a member of the public brought a very sensible question to committee. Essentially, is the Labour leadership satisfied that the appointments process for independent panel deciding Councillor’s pay, is fair and transparent? The Leadership’s answer – yes we are.

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Sure, any panel that recommends a 20% pay rise for you, is probably very satisfactory indeed. The problem here however, is that these are public appointments and it’s public money we are spending. I for one think there should be a good deal more fairness and transparency in how people get appointed to this Councillor’s pay committee.

It was admitted last week, there is no criteria for committee appointments. Apparently, Council bigwigs decide upon a person and notify the Leader. That’s it. Other than a quick check whether they have the time to come to meetings.

Green Party councillor Chris Musgrave

I asked the member of the public whether they felt the process was fair and transparent. They said, whilst not wanting to suggest any of the remuneration panel had acted improperly, questions had to be asked when more than one of the panel members had what we call in Council terms, a disclosable pecuniary interest. That is to say, in this particular context, panel members are associated with organisations that receive money, directly from the Council.

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I agree. Questions should be asked. How can the process be fair or transparent if the people deciding how much Councillors get paid, also indirectly get paid themselves by those same Councillors?

Fear not, we are told by the Council Leader. There is a review of this rather dubious process planned. At Scrutiny I asked, what are the details of this review? Will the review consider the points raised by the member of the public? The answer – not really. It’s a closed door review conducted by the same Council bigwigs that set up the process in the first place. Call me a cynic, but I’m not holding out much hope injecting either fairness or transparency following this review.

Exeter City Council

Exeter City Council is big on this concept of self review. Labour run the Council, they also hold all the Chairs and Vice Chairs of all the Scrutiny Committees. Meaning that Labour Councillors scrutinise Labour Councillor’s decisions, just as Council officers will be reviewing themselves over the Councillor pay debacle. Strangely though, neither these Councillors nor officers usually find anything amiss with their decision making.

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I put down an important recommendation last week at Scrutiny. Essentially, that the review seeks to capture the sentiment of the member of the public’s question. Also, that it addresses the very questionable nature of the current process on Councillor pay. The result of my recommendation? Blocked by Labour. Meaning Council bigwigs have a free hand to sweep these issues under the rug, should they so choose.

There was much wringing of hands at committee. The panel is independent. Councillors shouldn’t get involved and so on. The problem here though, is that this casual turning of a blind eye to what some might call a dodgy deal, is exactly why people are losing faith in politics. It’s also exactly why I say, Exeter is not a well run Council under Labour.

Council practices should be fair and transparent. Instead they are clear as mud and it seems, are designed to ensure no one is ever held to account. It’s time for a change